The Good News Is...Rooted in Justice, Mercy, and Faithfulness

A reflection on John 8:2–11 and Matthew 23:23 | Fifth Sunday in Lent

We live in a time marked by division, outrage, and increasing impatience with complexity. So much of modern life trains us to react quickly, speak loudly, and sort people into categories before we have taken time to see them clearly. In that environment, nuance often feels like a casualty.

Yet in the Gospel story of the woman brought before Jesus, nuance is exactly what grace makes room for.

When a Person Becomes a Problem

In John 8, the scribes and Pharisees interrupt Jesus while he is teaching and place before him a woman accused of adultery. She is not treated as a person with a story, a history, or dignity. She is used as a test case, a trap, a public spectacle. Her accusers are interested in winning an argument and preserving their authority. The woman herself becomes collateral damage.

That dynamic is not confined to the ancient world. It still happens whenever people are reduced to talking points, whenever moral certainty drowns out compassion, and whenever public shaming takes precedence over truth, healing, or accountability.

“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Jesus refuses to let the crowd discuss sin in the abstract. He forces them to reckon with the human being standing in front of them.

The Spiritual Power of the Pause

Before Jesus speaks, he bends down and writes on the ground. The text never tells us what he wrote. But perhaps the more important detail is that he pauses at all.

In a moment charged with accusation, fear, and pressure, Jesus does not rush to perform. He does not match the crowd’s urgency with more urgency. He creates space. He slows the moment down. He resists spectacle.

That pause matters. It reminds us that faithfulness is not always found in immediate reaction. Sometimes discipleship looks like restraint. Sometimes wisdom begins when we stop long enough to ask better questions.

Questions Worth Writing in the Sand

The Gospel leaves Jesus’ writing unnamed, which invites our imagination. Perhaps he was sketching questions the crowd did not want to consider:

• Was this woman allowed to speak for herself?
• Was this relationship consensual?
• Why is she the only one standing accused?
• Who benefits when punishment becomes public theater?

Whether or not those were the literal words in the dust, they reflect the spirit of what Jesus is doing: reintroducing moral depth into a conversation that had become harsh, shallow, and dangerously self-righteous.

Justice, Mercy, and Faithfulness Belong Together

The sermon’s companion text from Matthew 23:23 is key here. Jesus rebukes religious leaders for their meticulous attention to minor matters while neglecting what he calls “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” He does not dismiss the law. He calls people back to its deepest purpose.

Jesus calls us to hold the law in one hand and justice, mercy, and faithfulness in the other.

This is not a rejection of holiness or moral seriousness. It is a refusal to use righteousness as a weapon. It is a reminder that God’s justice is never severed from God’s mercy, and that true faithfulness is never indifferent to the vulnerable.

The story also invites Christians to be careful and humble in how we speak about Jewish law. Jesus is not rejecting Judaism. Rather, he stands firmly within a tradition that values faithful interpretation, moral responsibility, and protection of the vulnerable. His response is not a departure from God’s law, but a witness to its heart.

The Stones We Still Carry

Most of us are not literally standing in a crowd with rocks in our hands. But we do carry other kinds of stones: shame, contempt, gossip, caricature, self-righteousness, online cruelty, and the need to win.

Lent is a fitting season to ask what we have been clutching too tightly. What assumptions are we unwilling to release? What judgments do we enjoy making? Whom have we turned into an issue instead of seeing them as a child of God?

To follow Jesus is, in part, to learn how to put those stones down.

A Wider Mercy

At the close of the sermon, the congregation sang, “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy.” That hymn captured the sermon’s hope beautifully. In a world eager to condemn, God makes room for mercy. In a world obsessed with spectacle, Jesus restores dignity. In a world that rewards outrage, Christ teaches us the holy discipline of pause, humility, and compassion.

“There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, and there’s a kindness in God’s justice.”

That is good news for all of us. Because every one of us has stood in need of grace. And every one of us is called to become the kind of community where justice is tempered by mercy, truth is joined to humility, and no one is reduced to the worst thing said about them.

Reflection Questions

• Where do you see people turned into issues rather than treated as persons made in God’s image?
• What might it look like to practice Jesus’ pause in your own life this week?
• What “stones” are you being called to lay down?
• How can we, as a church, embody justice, mercy, and faithfulness together?

Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing preached this message on Sunday, March 22, 2026, at Guilford Park Presbyterian Church.

As we continue through Lent, one of the invitations of this season is to let God soften us—to remember who we are, whose we are, and what kind of people Jesus calls us to be. This week’s scriptures from Deuteronomy and Matthew remind us that the heart of God bends toward the vulnerable: toward children, toward strangers, toward those who are hungry, overlooked, or easily pushed aside.

“The kingdom is open to all, but again and again Jesus insists that it is the vulnerable, the overlooked, the little ones, who are nearest its center.”

“You Were a Child Once, Too”

Fred Rogers once offered a line of wisdom to a group of ophthalmologists who were trying to care more gently for children in their offices: You were a child once, too. It is such a simple sentence, but it carries extraordinary spiritual weight. It asks adults to remember vulnerability from the inside. It asks us not to dismiss fear, not to rush past tenderness, not to treat children as interruptions.

That sentence also opens up this week’s gospel beautifully. In Matthew 19, children are being brought to Jesus so that he might bless them, and the disciples try to send them away. The disciples assume Jesus has more important things to do. They assume this is grown-up business.

But Jesus will have none of it. He rebukes them and says, “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”

“For those who follow Jesus, the vulnerable are not interruptions. They are where the kingdom shows up first.”

The Vulnerable at the Center

One of the striking truths of scripture is that God does not treat vulnerable people as peripheral. Over and over again, they are brought to the center. In Deuteronomy 24, God commands the people not to squeeze every possible bit of profit from their fields. Some grain is to be left behind. Some olives are to remain on the tree. Some grapes are to stay on the vine. Why? So that the stranger, the orphan, and the widow might eat.

This is not charity as an afterthought. It is justice built into the life of the community. God’s people are commanded to organize their common life in such a way that the vulnerable are protected and cared for.

And the reason God gives is memory: “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt.” In other words, do not forget what it feels like to be powerless. Do not forget what it feels like to depend on mercy.

A Kingdom Measured by Compassion

Jesus carries that same logic forward. He welcomes the children not only because they matter, but because they reveal something essential about the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom is not built around status, power, or self-importance. It is revealed in humility, dependence, tenderness, and welcome.

To say that the kingdom belongs to such as these is to say that God’s reign is most clearly seen wherever vulnerable people are received with dignity, care, and joy.

What This Means Here and Now

These texts are not merely ancient ideals. They confront us in the present tense. In Guilford County, too many children live with food insecurity. Too many families face barriers just trying to get groceries on the table. It should not be this hard to feed a child.

When Jesus says, “Let the children come to me,” it is not a sentimental line. It is a summons. It asks what kind of society we are building, what kind of church we are becoming, and whether our habits and priorities make room for the vulnerable or push them aside.

“Too often, our nation’s policies and priorities tell children and their families: your hunger is not urgent enough.”

Lent is a good season for facing such truths honestly. It is a season for repentance, yes, but also for reorientation. We are invited to turn again toward the heart of God.

Remembering as a Spiritual Practice

There is a deep connection between the words of Deuteronomy and the wisdom Fred Rogers offered. Deuteronomy says: remember that you were once a slave in Egypt. Fred Rogers says: remember that you were once a child, too.

Both are calls to sacred remembering. Remember what fear feels like. Remember what helplessness feels like. Remember what it is to need gentleness from a world that can be hard and hurried. Remembering in this way can soften us. It can break through the illusion that we are self-sufficient, invulnerable, untouched by the struggles of others.

And when that remembering softens us, it changes how we live. We become more generous. More patient. More willing to leave something in the field for someone else. More willing to make room at the center for those who have been treated as marginal.

A Word for the Church

The church is called to be a community where the welcome of Christ becomes visible. That means being a people with open hands instead of clenched fists, tender hearts instead of hardened ones, and lives shaped not by fear but by compassion.

It means asking not, “How do we protect our comfort?” but, “How do we make room for the vulnerable?” It means resisting every voice that says, “What’s going to happen is going to happen—just make sure it doesn’t happen to you.”

That may be the logic of self-protection, but it is not the logic of the gospel.

“So let the children come. Let the stranger come. Let the hungry come.”

May we be the kind of church where they do. And may they find in us not a barrier, but the welcome of Christ himself.

The Good News Is…Together, the Impossible Is Possible

On the Third Sunday in Lent, we reflected on Mark’s account of the feeding of the five thousand and Paul’s reminder in Ephesians that God is able to accomplish far more than we can ask or imagine. In a world shaped by scarcity and fear, Christ invites us to discover what becomes possible when gifts are shared in community.

Before there was amplification, there was community.

Jesus feeds the five thousand in a way that is both miraculous and deeply communal. The disciples see a vast crowd, a late hour, and limited resources. Their conclusion is simple: there is not enough. Not enough food, not enough money, not enough capacity. But Jesus refuses to let scarcity have the final word. Instead, he tells them, “You give them something to eat.”

That command is as unsettling now as it must have been then. Jesus does not deny the reality of the need. He does not pretend the problem is smaller than it is. But he also does not allow the disciples to remain spectators. He invites them into the work. He asks them to participate in the miracle.

That is part of the good news of this story: in Christ, God’s abundance becomes real not only through divine power from above, but also through shared human participation below. Voices carry the word. Hands pass the bread. Communities discover together that the impossible is possible.

This week, I found myself reflecting on that truth through the idea of amplification. Our church is currently considering replacing aging audio equipment in the sanctuary, and it got me thinking about how Jesus spoke to enormous crowds without microphones, speakers, or soundboards. He had no modern tools of amplification. Instead, his message was carried by people.

Maybe that is how good news has always traveled best: from person to person. A word spoken here, repeated there. A phrase caught by one listener and passed on to another. Before there was electronic amplification, there was community. In a very real sense, Jesus’ followers became his amplifiers.

The same is true in the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus could have acted alone. He could have dropped a feast from heaven into the crowd’s laps. But he chose not to. He chose to involve the disciples. He chose participation over spectacle. He chose a kingdom in which people are not passive consumers, but active participants in grace.

That matters because the disciples’ posture is one we know well. It is the posture of scarcity. There are too many people. It is too late in the day. We do not have enough. And yet Jesus looks at the very same situation and sees something else entirely: a community that has not yet realized what is possible when people bring what they have and place it in God’s hands.

A year ago, our own congregation faced a version of that same question. We were discerning whether to convert the youth lounge into a temporary homeless shelter for women over the summer. The questions were practical and understandable: Do we have enough space? Enough volunteers? Enough money? Enough flexibility? Enough energy?

Those were not foolish questions. But beneath them was a more spiritual one: if we open what we have to others, will there still be enough left for us?

That is exactly the question that lingers in Mark 6. The disciples see the math of insufficiency. Jesus sees the possibility of shared abundance. “You give them something to eat,” he says. In other words: bring what you have, offer it together, and trust that in God’s hands, shared gifts can become more than enough.

By God’s grace, that is what our church discovered. We took the leap. We opened our doors. We welcomed our neighbors. And we found that when we placed what we had into Christ’s hands, God provided every space, volunteer, resource, and bit of courage we needed.

That is the promise echoed in Ephesians 3:20–21: God is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine by the power already at work within us.

I also shared about Sand River Community Farm in Keeseville, New York, where food is grown and shared not as a commodity, but as a gift. There, neighbors work together not for wages or profit, but so that others may eat. They do not speak of “free” food, because “free” can imply something without value. Instead, they speak of food as gift—something precious, cultivated through labor, care, and community.

Their witness asks a challenging question: What if we stopped believing the lie of scarcity? What if we saw food, money, time, compassion, and even our voices not merely as possessions to protect, but as gifts to share?

Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.”

Not just you watch.
Not just you admire.
You give.
You carry.
You pass it along.

The good news is not just that Jesus once fed a hungry crowd long ago. The good news is that Christ still confronts our fear of not-enough. Christ still teaches communities to speak a different word: a word of gift, a word of mercy, a word of enough.

And that word still travels through people.

Through voices.
Through bodies.
Through neighbors.
Through communities willing to trust that, together in Christ, the impossible is possible.

There is enough for all: enough food, enough housing, enough healthcare, enough mercy.

Together, the impossible is possible.